


Tiny Islands Where We Didn't Always Have To Be Afraid

by Zee



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Backstory, F/F, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, jessica being kind of an insensitive asshole about things in typical jessica fashion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 22:12:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9092770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zee/pseuds/Zee
Summary: A look at the beginning of their relationship, and how the road to emancipation for Trish might have started.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to marble_flan for the encouragement and beta.

“I don’t understand why you’re such a chickenshit,” Jessica said. Dorothy had started yelling at Trish at dinnertime, Trish had asked Jessica to leave the room when the sun was setting, and the fight didn’t die down entirely until long after it was dark. Now Jessica was lying in Trish’s bed even though Trish definitely didn’t want her to be there, and they were both supposed to be asleep. 

“God, Jess.” Her name said with disgust and aggravation and resentment. Jessica waited but Trish didn’t follow it with anything. She seemed too exhausted to deal with Jessica on top of her mother. If Jessica were less frustrated herself (and maybe a better person, also) she wouldn’t push.

Jessica had been stupid enough to believe that after one confrontation with Dorothy, that would be it. The abuse would be over. Saving was a one-time deal, with a distinct before and a different after. 

It was different now, but not different enough. There was too much shit Dorothy did that wasn’t physical. And Jessica couldn’t be there all the time--couldn’t even be there most of the time, what with auditions and interviews and tapings and everything she wasn’t a part of that put Trish alone with her mother. 

“I can’t help you if you don’t even let me in the room. And don’t give me that ‘some things are between us’ bullshit.”

There were times, like tonight, when Jessica couldn’t help because Trish did not allow her to. Jessica had also hoped that this particular battle of wills with Trish would be a one-time deal, too; that it was enough to say, “I couldn’t help it” and see gratitude win out over frustration and fear in Trish’s eyes. Apparently, it wasn’t enough.

“Some things _are_ just between us.” Trish was sitting up in bed, her back to the wall, her shoulders slumped. Her legs were propped up on Jessica’s thigh, their bodies perpendicular. 

Sometimes Jessica thought about how much she touched Trish and let Trish touch her, and how weird that was considering she’d never been very comfortable with physical contact with anyone before. She’d never had any female friends who liked hugging her or leaning on her or anything like that. She’d never liked sleepovers. Hell, even her parents talked--used to talk--about how she was a physically distant child who never liked being hugged or held once she reached a certain age. 

But ever since Trish found out about her powers, Jessica had found herself all up in Trish’s personal space without even thinking about it. It was like she couldn’t stop herself, and Trish was the same way with her. They hugged each other, leaned on each other, sprawled on each other, shared Trish’s massive queen-sized princess bed sometimes. Jessica knew Trish wasn’t this way with any of her other friends, because Trish didn’t have other friends--starlets didn’t get to have friends, apparently.

Jessica wasn’t so naive that she believed the touchiness was because they were close, or because they liked each other. (She liked Trish some of the time, but she was pretty sure Trish liked her none of the time.) You didn’t have to like someone to need them. 

“They shouldn’t be. You don’t owe her privacy, that’s just giving her free rein to treat you like shit.”

Trish bent her knee and curled her toes, pressing them into the soft part of Jessica’s thigh. “She’s still my mom.”

“Yeah, whatever. Tell that to your therapist years from now when you have to explain why you need a million prescriptions.”

“You’re such a bitch.” Trish shoved with her foot, and Jessica caught her ankle. “‘Tell that to my therapist’? As if you’re so wise to the world. You live here, too. Where would you go if I let you pick every fight that you wanted to and she kicked you out?”

Jessica tapped her chin, pretending to contemplate the question. “I’d fight strangers for cash. Let the bets pile up because they think they can win against a teenaged girl, then knock their teeth out.”

“Right. That’s definitely very compatible with your desire to keep your powers hidden.”

Jessica ignored that. “Want to come with me? You could be my hype woman, introducing me at every rink, asking the audience which brave man is gonna step up and teach me a lesson. You’d be good at that. You’d have them eating out of the palm of your hand.”

“Even if you’d eventually win, I don’t have much of a desire to see you get the snot beat out of you.” Trish paused, then smiled, her teeth a bright flash in the low light of the room. “For some reason.” 

Jessica grinned back, baring her teeth. “I’m sure you’d get used to it.”

They’d had this conversation before. Jessica insisting that they could leave, Trish dismissing it. Trish didn’t see the urgency of the situation; Trish couldn’t observe herself from the outside, couldn’t see the way she seemed to take up less and less space after every single fight, couldn’t see how she was still being whittled down now that the violence mostly wasn’t physical.

It felt urgent to Jessica. Jessica didn’t want to see Trish whittled down to nothing.

They fell asleep together eventually, and Jessica woke in the morning with Trish’s hair tickling her nose. She reached up to brush it away but her fingers stopped, paused amongst blonde strands. Trish was still asleep, so Jessica followed the weird impulse, stroking her hair a couple of times. 

Trish shifted and made a sleepy noise, and Jessica froze, caught. But Trish didn’t freak out or ask her what she was doing. She inclined her head so that Jessica could see her profile, the tip of her nose and a couple eyelashes outlined against the pale blue of her bedroom wall. 

Jessica waited a few more seconds, and then went back to playing with her hair.

***

Jessica’s therapist didn’t believe her that she was asking questions about abuse for someone else. It had been a bad idea to bring it up, considering that Jessica had thus far refused to discuss anything of substance or cooperate with the therapist in any way--she showed up once a week because she had to, but no one could force her to talk about her feelings. 

It was all Jessica could do to convince Dr. Horton not to call her case worker. They argued, and Jessica slouched further in her chair as Dr. Horton pushed her glasses higher on her nose with one skinny finger, staring her down. “It’s fine,” Jessica heard herself saying. It was like she was listening to her voice muffled, the lie coming as if through a wall. She thought about punching a hole in the wall of this cramped office with no windows. “Everything’s fine, just forget it.”

_Don’t make this mistake again,_ Jessica told herself as Dr. Horton studied her. _Don’t spill someone else’s secret on accident because you asked the wrong questions to the wrong person._ She was banking on Dr. Horton’s overfull schedule, the bags under her eyes, the nicotine stains around her fingernails. Hopefully she was stressed enough to do herself the favor of not following up on this, not adding to her substantial workload.

“We’re almost out of time,” Dr. Horton said, her eyes sliding from Jessica to the clock on her desk. “In the hypothetical situation you brought up, if CPS intervened then the minor could be removed from the household if it was a crisis situation. But if it’s not judged to be that dangerous, there would probably a case worker assigned to assess the household on a regular basis.”

“Like the one assigned to me now,” Jessica said. That useless drip of a person who could barely tie her own shoelaces. 

“Perhaps. But that investigation wouldn’t be a guarantee that you’d be placed with a new family.”

Jessica swallowed her impulsive response that she didn’t want a new family; it was the truth, she didn’t want to leave Trish. Couldn’t, maybe. But she’d already given up too much of the truth on accident and she needed to think about what was the better thing to say. What would keep Dr. Horton talking? What was Jessica really trying to dig down to?

“I don’t want to be placed with a new family,” Jessica said, adding, “Hypothetically. I don’t want to be ‘placed’ at all.” 

“I understand,” Dr. Horton said, full of gentle condescension. Jessica rolled her eyes.

“There’s got to be other ways, right? To be more in control. Instead of just trading your asshole parent for an asshole caseworker.”

“Do you feel like you’re not in control, Jessica?” 

The voice got even gentler, somehow. Jessica pressed her lips together and stared at the space above Dr. Horton’s shoulder. Maybe if she just shut up and waited it out, Dr. Horton would get around to saying something useful.

It worked. “There are paths to emancipation for minors, but studies show that kids from foster care who are emancipated don't have the support they need to be successful. I wouldn’t recommend it in this hypothetical case.”

“Support? Like financial support?”

Dr. Horton frowned. “All kinds of support. Growing up with a family teaches us important life skills, helps us build internal resources that we rely on for the rest of our lives. And yes, there is the financial aspect. Emancipated minors have removed themselves from their possible familial safety net. That can be a hard loss to fully comprehend when you’re young, but trust me, there are times in most of our lives when we need that safety net to fall back on, and not having it puts you in a precarious place.”

“Our time’s gotta be up, right?” Jessica was already standing, zipping up her jacket. “See you in a week.”

Dr. Horton’s shoulders slumped, but she was already looking at her appointment book, assessing whoever was coming in next. “Take care, Jessica.”

Jessica skipped her afternoon classes the next day and went to the city library instead. She didn’t really know what she was looking for. ‘Emancipation’ wasn’t a category in the dewey decimal system. She found herself sprawled on the floor between the stacks with heaps of ancient and boring books on family law, bored and frustrated and lost. 

She had better luck going through the phonebook and calling lawyer after lawyer. On the first call, she hadn’t thought about what she was going to say beforehand, and when the receptionist politely asked what she was calling about, her mind went terrifyingly blank for a few seconds before she stumbled through a hasty lie about being a law student working on her thesis. She didn’t expect it to work but the woman on the other end of the line never got suspicious, although she also said she couldn’t give Jessica much legal advice unless she was willing to come in for an initial consultation. 

Jessica continued calling other places, sometimes using the grad student lie and sometimes adopting other personas--a housewife calling on behalf of her niece, a coach representing a teenaged Olympic-level athlete, a nice church lady who had noticed an upsetting family dynamic within her congregation. Most of the smaller firms refused to give out free advice, but the larger ones had paralegals who were able to talk, or they had whole separate lines to answer questions like hers.

After a few hours Jessica had filled up most of her notebook for her math class with information. She had names and numbers to give to Trish. She could explain what the next steps should be. She could present a way out.

It had been weirdly fun, spending those few hours focused on doing research, getting information, chasing ideas. And maybe she had even been sort of good at it, it felt like she’d been good at it. Not as good as she was at hitting things really hard, and not as good at Trish was at pretty much everything, but still. It was a weird surprise to not hate doing something.

***

Trish didn’t say anything when Jessica first proposed the idea. She sat there quietly while Jessica explained what emancipation was, the process to get there, and why Trish’s particular situation meant that her chances of the court granting it were very good. Jessica had really expected to be interrupted, for this to turn into an argument, and when Trish just let her trail off at the end she didn’t quite know what to do with herself. She sat there awkwardly for a while, glancing at Trish through the fall of her bangs, before shoving her notebook into Trish’s lap and pointing out the list of good lawyers to call.

Trish finally looked up, and Jessica let out the breath she’d been holding. But Trish looked far away and vacant, like she’d been staring directly at bright lights for too long. Like she hadn’t been listening at all. “Why did you do all this?” 

“What? Asshole, why do you think?” Jessica hated how shaky her voice sounded, hated that she’d started holding her breath again without even thinking about it. They were sitting across from each other on the couch and Jessica wanted to inch closer until their knees touched, at the very least. 

Trish was shaking her head, over and over, long blonde unbound hair swinging. “You don’t have to do this. I don’t want you to do this--this kind of _shit._ ”

Trish never swore. “I’m just trying to--”

“Stop trying!” Trish stood, the notebook on her lap falling to the floor. It landed face down, spiral spine up, several pages bending against the carpet. Trish was already walking away, into her bedroom, the door slamming behind her.

Jessica heard a ripping sound, and looked down. Her fingers had dug into the couch, ripping up the seam. Between her clenched fingers, she could see beneath the fabric to the cushion’s white stuffing.

Well, whatever. It wasn’t the first piece of furniture Jessica had ruined in this house. And if Trish’s reaction tonight was any indication, it wouldn’t be the last.

***

Jessica expected Trish to stay pissed at her for days after the emancipation suggestion, but instead Trish acted like nothing had happened, which was maybe worse. On Friday night she met Jessica when school got out--Trish didn’t go to high school, of course she didn’t, she had a private tutor. And now she was stepping out of the passenger seat of her chauffeured car to meet Jessica on the sidewalk while other kids scurried past, more-or-less used to their local celebrity. Her hair was blown out and perfect, her eyes sweeping Jessica up and down. Jessica hooked her thumb in the belt loop of her jeans and slouched.

“There’s a party tonight,” Jessica said. “My mom’s letting me go because one of those Disney actors is involved and she wants me to make connections. You should come.”

“I’ll pass. Doesn’t really seem like my thing.”

“I phrased myself badly. I meant to say, you’re coming. Up to you whether you wanna wear your own clothes or borrow something nicer.”

“Okay,” Jessica said, flatly as possible. She didn’t know how to feel about the unreadable expression on Trish’s face, the thin line of her mouth and the tightness of her shoulders. Jessica would follow Trish to this stupid fucking celebrity party; she would pretty much follow Trish anywhere, it was just a question of whether Trish had figured that out yet. “Are you offering me a ride home?”

Trish inclined her head gracefully and Jessica hopped in the backseat. It was a good thing she didn’t give a shit what anyone at this new school thought of her, otherwise she might be embarrassed to get into a Lincoln town car that someone else was paid to drive.

The party was not what Jessica was expecting. It started fancy enough, with some photographers and reporters, but they left early, and then it was just all teenagers or people who looked like teenagers, ruining their expensive designer clothes and passing around top-shelf liquor. Music that Jessica hated blared in every room, making the floor shake. 

She lost track of Trish almost immediately. Everyone else here looked through her as soon as they realized she wasn’t in the entertainment industry--a fact which seemed to be immediately obvious to all of them, despite the two thousand dollar outfit Trish had dressed her in. 

Jessica’s parents had started to allow her the occasional glass of wine with dinner during the last year they’d been alive, but she had never been drunk before. At first, she wasn’t even sure if she could get there--who the hell knew what her metabolism was like, with her powers--but three glasses of whiskey answered that question pretty quickly. Trish found her spilling the fourth on her Prada skirt.

“There you are,” Trish said, breathless and clutching at Jessica as if she wasn’t the one who’d immediately ditched. Jessica wanted to yank her wrists out of Trish’s grip but couldn’t quite get her brain to send the message intact to her limbs. Instead she drifted closer into Trish’s arms.

“Wanna do coke with me? They’ve got some out in the guest room upstairs, come on.” Trish had clearly already partaken, her pupils blown and her grin manic. Jessica was just sober enough to feel guilty; you weren’t supposed to let the former pill-popper do lines, she was pretty sure about that. 

But the guilt didn’t last. Trish was already pulling her towards the stairs, Jessica’s drink falling to the floor and scattering half-melted ice cubes over the expensive hall rug. Trish kept a vice grip on her hand as they went upstairs, and Jessica felt her dizzy gaze dragged down, staring at the curve of Trish’s spine disappearing into the back of her dress, her narrow hips, and--lower. Whatever material that skirt was, it was clingy. And short. And Trish’s legs were really something else.

_You’re drunk,_ Jessica tried to remind herself, _This probably isn’t real, you’ve never been obsessed with her ass before._ But that wasn’t really true, and anyway it did nothing to curb Jessica’s impulse to lean forward on her toes, teetering into Trish’s personal space as soon as Trish stopped walking in front of her.

“Oh my god, don’t fall on me. Shouldn’t your super powers help you keep your balance?” Trish’s hand came up, clumsily knocking into Jessica’s cheek a couple of times before finding the side of her head, fingers curling in Jessica’s hair. 

“Don’t be shitty,” Jessica said, leaning into her further. “Don’t talk about that stuff here.”

Trish let go of her head in order to turn around and look Jessica in the eye, and later Jessica would never be able to remember clearly who started it that first time. There was no dramatic moment when one girl leaned in and the other girl closed her eyes. They were just suddenly kissing, like it was easy, like it was anything.

Jessica’s hangover the next morning was terrible, and she swore to herself she’d never drink again. 

***

Jessica surprised herself with how brave she could be, knocking softly on Trish’s door in the middle of the night when they were supposed to be asleep and crawling into her bed, kissing her before Trish could finish asking what she was doing. The party was three days ago now. Jessica didn’t want it to be a one-time thing.

Apparently Trish didn’t, either, because she kissed back, grabbing at Jessica’s shoulders, her thumb pressing against Jessica’s skin through a hole in the t-shirt she slept in. And then they were doing this for real, the momentum of two bodies making them fall back onto the bed, fumbling against the covers, hands slipping under the elastics of two pairs of underwear. Jessica’s thoughts felt hot and desert-dry, almost feverish in her urgency to touch Trish in every unknown place.

Trish’s fingers were hard and bony, her hand unyielding in its pressure between Jessica’s legs. Her fingernails were long enough to scrape just slightly in tender spots, but Jessica didn’t care. She pushed herself into Trish as close as she dared and came like some clinging, clutching thing, unraveled and uncivil. 

Trish didn’t come. After a while she pushed Jessica’s hand away with a sigh, saying, “It’s okay.”

“But--”

“It’s really okay,” Trish said, kissing her cheek. “It’s not easy for me to get there.”

Jessica relented, curled up against Trish with her head on her shoulder. She’d never done any of this before--not sex, not figuring out how to cuddle with someone afterward. But when she put an arm tentatively across Trish’s middle, Trish let her hug her close.

“Have you ever had an orgasm?” She knew Trish wasn’t a virgin.

“Never with someone else.” Trish sighed. “And not very often just with myself, I guess. If I’m being honest.”

“You can always be honest with me.” Jessica bit her lip hard, embarrassed at blurting out earnestness. But Trish didn’t make any kind of snide comment back, just returned Jessica’s embrace and rubbed her cheek against Jessica’s hair. 

“Yeah, I know.”

***

Weirdly, it was Trish who brought the subject back up. Jessica hadn't exactly forgotten about her math notebook with its list of numbers, but she had buried it in her locker under other items that would never see the light of the day. And she'd been too distracted by the scarily wonderful novelty of sleeping with Trish to entertain dark thoughts about how the future might look if no one saved anyone.

“Emancipation,” Trish said with no preamble or context one afternoon while Dorothy was out on some afternoon, giving them free rein of the house for many blissful hours. “Why'd you suggest that?”

Jessica's cheeks and lips were still wet from where she'd been eating Trish out. She had yet to give Trish an orgasm, but Trish claimed that she felt like she was getting closer, it was feeling really good, better than with anyone else. Maybe she was just saying that, but Jessica couldn't keep enough of a hold on her own skepticism to prevent those words from making her proud.

Jessica didn't answer immediately even though she could feel Trish's eyes on her, intense and impatient. Trish hadn't asked because she was looking for Jessica to say something about the depth of her devotion. This wasn't emotional: the question came up out of the blue because Trish must have been thinking about it for a while, trying to puzzle it out. It was the same question Trish had asked first, one she couldn't get past, and Jessica knew the whole issue would never be even slightly considered until she'd gotten a satisfactory answer.

“Because I think you can do it,” Jessica said. “I think your case would look good to the courts. I think you have a real shot.”

Trish's animated gaze moved from Jessica up to her bedroom ceiling. “I'll be seventeen in five months. Then I only have to wait another year.”

A year and five months seemed like an eternity to Jessica, and she'd bet it felt that way to Trish to. She pushed herself up on an elbow, staring down at Trish and her red cheeks and her god damn fucking martyrlike expression. She took a deep breath, afraid.

“Emancipation would mean you'd get yours. Financial independence. You really think she's going to just peace out and let go of you being her cash cow when you're a legal adult?”

They had never talked about the Walker money situation directly before. Jessica half-expected that Trish would explode and hit her, but she didn't even get mad. Instead her eyes filled up with tears almost instantly, like Jessica had pressed some magic button behind her tear ducts. Jessica shrank back.

“She's stolen so much already,” Trish said, eyes closed now, voice low and shaken with grief. “I don't even know what I could get back. I don't know. I don't know.”

“I'll help you. We'll get lawyers, and we'll keep it a secret until the day we face her in court.” Jessica didn't know where this steel in her voice was coming from and didn't know how the process she was describing would really work--would this ordeal even involve facing Dorothy in court, like some TV legal drama? But Trish was crying because she said she didn't know, so Jessica would say that she did.

“How do I even get a lawyer?” At least Trish's eyes were open now, even if she was still crying. Jessica took her hand, entwined their fingers.

“I got all those phone numbers, remember? We'll go down the list.” 

Trish startled her by rearing up without warning her, pushing their mouths together in something like a kiss. Her tongue in Jessica's mouth was overeager, frantic and pushy. Jessica let herself be pushed back down on the bed, let Trish and her pushy tongue roam.

“Okay,” Trish said in her post-cry voice, her face in the vicinity of Jessica's ribcage. “Okay, I’ll try.” 

Jessica sunk her hand deep into Trish's hair. “Good,” she said, a little breathless. “I'll help you.”

**Author's Note:**

> _whatever the truth, in the end we made_  
>  tiny islands where we didn't always have to be afraid  
> and an X will forever mark the spot  
> when we decided we had had just about enough 
> 
> _we ran so fast  
>  we ran so fast_
> 
> -"Run Fast," The Julie Ruin


End file.
